A Little Hiatus and a Little Love

Texas Sunset

Life has been crazy busy and looking back I realize I haven't posted on my site in nearly a month. I've been taking a little hiatus and, though it was unplanned, it may continue for a little longer. I have recipes piling up and ready to go but my energy is needed in other areas of my life at the moment.I've been traveling some. This past week I was in Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Tennessee - one fifth of the United States in 6 days. Now that I'm back home I'm planning for my own move this week into a new house. I'll have a couple of weeks to settle in and then I'm gone for three more weeks traveling to Portland and Hawaii, for work and fun respectively.

But, luckily, in the midst of it all I am finding some much needed time for quiet and reflection. The heavens have been swirling around us these past few months in unique alignments that require contemplation, change and release of past. The need for change is calling to us on a cosmic level, and things are beginning to shift everywhere. I've been working on my self and taking a real hard look at patterns I haven't wanted to see. There are some dogged old patterns in my life that are in dire need of change, and I am working to release them and let them go.

The books of Deepak Chopra are some of my best companions on this journey to self. The Path to Love and The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success have been my daily respite from spiraling thoughts and unhappy moments. In The Path to Love, Chopra reminds us that true love comes from the love of self and the ability to see ourselves as truly lovable. Living from love allows us to be kind and giving, and act from a place of pure gratitude. It allows us to share our heart with others and fill all of life with pure joy.

I hope this post finds you fully in love with yourself, right in this moment, just as you are. If you need a few words of encouragement, the poem below is a reminder to commune with yourself and rediscover your true nature. Just remember that you are love itself and that you are always loved, even when you can't feel it.

Love After Love

by Derek Walcott

The time will comewhen, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was yourself.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.